July 2010

ICT for Afghan self-stabilization

(This post was originally made to the blog <www.phibetaiota.com>, operated by Robert David Steele, founder of the Open Source Intelligence movement, in the hopes that it might reach some receptive ear with the capability to implement. As it stands I have no such capability. Perhaps broader circulation will enable the idea to be picked up. If those who implement it want to claim credit for themselves, they are welcome - it is more important that the idea be attempted than that I receive plaudits.) LF

Afghan Self-Stabilization from Below and Above

Lee Felsenstein, Fonly Institute

As the end game begins for NATO and the US in Afghanistan, and as the
potential mineral wealth of that unhappy land is revealed, one
confronts despair when contemplating the fate of the Afghans. With the
Taliban poised to move once more into the coming power vacuum and
exploit a resurgent drug trade as well as establish a protection racket
parasitic to the future mining industry, one looks for some glimmer of
hope for the Afghan people.

After all, Afghanistan has never been conquered except by the
Mongols. The much decentralized, tribal society that makes them
vulnerable to decentralized gang rule has confounded each centralized
invader who attempted to bring about their own version of order. Is
there hope that the Afghan people will be able to expel the Taliban as
they expelled the others? After all, the first government of the Taliban
was not overthrown by the Afghans themselves, but by military invasion
with the passive consent of the Afghan people.

Now, with the outside military forces beginning their final period
in-country, and with little if any evidence of a viable government
staffed by officials who will not bolt the country with their pockets
stuffed, what can give the ordinary Afghans the means to resist as they
have resisted other occupations?

The answer, I believe, lies in the essence of government. Government
operates by communication. People in government gather, refine, transmit
information, both from the populace to the seat of power and in reverse
after policies and laws are defined based upon the information
gathered. People have political power to the extent that they are
included in this process of information flow to the exclusion of others.

Gangs are political organizations in that communications are
restricted to members within a defined hierarchy. The power of a gang
can be broken when the people on whom they feed as parasites develop
their own structure of communication and use it to coordinate
countervailing power.

Given that the Taliban is a gang it is necessary to ensure that
Afghan communities have access to a communication structure which will
enable their own ability to organize concerted action against the
parasites. Attempts to set up this structure in the form of a classical
government have not been successful.

But is a government really necessary at the outset? I will suggest
that a telephone network would provide the necessary means for
coordination among communities as well as the basis of trade that would
allow a functioning economy to develop. In a land where weapons are
everywhere, the missing element for military power is coordination.

Of course, communication infrastructure is one of the first targets
of any invading military force to control or destroy. Therefore, one may
say, a nationwide cellular network would not survive the depredations
of any military force.

However, only a few powers can project force into space. The
low-earth-orbit (LEO) network of satellites is immune from threat from
armies or gangs tied to the ground.

What if a satellite phone were left with each village and tribe in
Afghanistan, with service prepaid by the withdrawing powers, and with
means for solar recharging? Batteries and other accessories could be
made available to local merchants at subsidized prices. While the
Taliban would immediately declare possession of these phones to be a
capital offense, enforcement of such a ban would be very difficult. The
Afghans are well familiar with concealment and protection of the means
to their economic and social existence.

The cost of such an effort would be minuscule compared with the cost
of military occupation. Economic development would come as a concomitant
to social and political stabilization, not as an aftermath. Practice in
developing countries shows that availability of telecommunications
enables the creation of markets that were previously nonexistent, and
enables the middlemen to move up the economic chain instead of squeezing
the producers.

I do not know the capacity of the LEO systems, but great capacity is
not needed where communication lead times on the order of an hour counts
as near-instantaneous. And more channel capacity can be created.

This space-based telecomm system can give way to ground-based systems
as the military threat decreases. Open-source software-implemented GSM
base station designs have been under development for years. The costs
now understood to be inherent in the operation and maintenance of
first-class telecomm systems can be greatly reduced as the costs of
computers have been reduced. No significant technical problem remains to
be solved – this can all be implemented in fairly short order.

The means to allow Afghanistan to stabilize itself are at hand. It
remains to be seen whether adequate support can be brought to bear in
time. While it would be fitting for the governments involved to provide
this support, it does not have to be done by government action.

Comments

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Your observation that Afghanis do not have access to communication is both astonishing and obvious.

Reagan is credited the fax with the downfall of the Soviet Union, and Facebook seems to have been necessary for the Arab Spring. I am very sympathetic to the idea that communication and literacy are crucial to scale Afghanistan's government.

My heart is being injure and is on a self-destruct mode by rubbing Afghan self-stabilization. Economic expansion would come as an associated to social and supporting stabilization. Thanks Ruben for you post.

The Afghanistan Network Information Center (AfgNIC) is a department under ICT Directorate, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT). AfgNIC also performs activities for the public, such as oversee the administration of IP address assignment /Registration in Afghanistan through coordination with National Internet Registry of Afghanistan (NIRA).

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About Lee Felsenstein

Based in Silicon Valley, Lee currently does electronic product development, due diligence, expert witness assistance as well as speaking engagements and participation in conferences such as the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conferences. The most unusual places he has spoken were at the Waag in Amsterdam and a squat in Milan, Italy.
He was named the 2007 "Editor's Choice" in the Awards for Creative Excellance made by EE Times magazine. He holds 12 patents to date.